


The beauty of the world which is so soon to perish, has two edges.

by thenewradical



Category: Fringe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-17
Updated: 2010-12-17
Packaged: 2017-10-13 17:45:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/139982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thenewradical/pseuds/thenewradical
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daily life on both sides of the mirror.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The beauty of the world which is so soon to perish, has two edges.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [melodyunity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/melodyunity/gifts).



> The title is from "A Room of One's Own" by Virginia Woolf. Many thanks to lilacsigil for the speedy and helpful beta.

The earth’s circumference is 24, 523 miles, with an annual decrease of .2% every year.

450,000 people work for Fringe Divisions across the United States

It takes three and a half hours to get from New York City to Boston, the largest urban quarantine center in the United States.

Every morning, Agent Olivia Dunham enters Fringe Division headquarters at 8:30 AM, carrying a bottle of water. Additionally, 55% of the time she also carries the empty wrapper from the breakfast that she eats on the way in to work. The exception is a two-month period in which she came in at 8 AM without any food or drink.

Colonel Broyles came in to the office every day until he was killed during a fringe event. Further information is classified.

It is Agent Farnsworth’s job to know these details. She cycles through them and notices anomalies. When the anomalies are important, she passes them on to a superior. She makes choices every day about what is worth passing on and what isn’t.

She decided within 24 hours not to pass on the information that Agent Dunham had been replaced by a doppelganger. This was because, aside from small quirks in personality, she was doing the same work and did not appear to be positioned to carry out an ulterior mission. Agent Farnsworth also did not have enough information on where this doppelganger could have come from to make a fully informed decision.

She was not concerned about where Agent Dunham had gone or what had happened to her doppelganger when she came back. Agent Farnsworth does not have a close relationship with her colleagues. It is not a part of her job to form relationships.

She does not miss Colonel Broyles.

She does not miss the other Agent Dunham.

She continues calculating.

\-------

Dinner in the city with Elizabeth is a weekly tradition. It started out as something they did on their anniversary back when it was a luxury. Now that they live in the city and are much wealthier than thirty years before, they go out every week. Sometimes, it’s the only chance Walter gets to see her.

This is one of those weeks. The fallout from Colonel Broyles’ death is astounding. It was never Walter’s intention for Broyles to be killed, but these things happen sometimes. The nature of their work is so unpredictable. He could have done without the massive reorganization that Broyles’ death caused, though.

“Are you alright?” Elizabeth asks.

Walter looks up from his dish—mussels with a delectable garlic-chili sauce—at his wife. He is struck by how beautiful she looks and the restaurant’s candlelight makes her eyes sparkle. “Oh yes,” he answers. “Just tired, that’s all.”

“I know. It’s been a busy week for you,” she says.

“Mhm.” When he notices how closely she’s watching him, he enthusiastically continues, “There have been some wonderful discoveries in the lab. I’ve been spending so much time there recently. It is good to be back. It makes me feel young again.”

She nods and after a moment says, “And I’m sure you’ve been busy dealing with Philip’s death. It was such a shame.”

Though he remains iron on the outside, the look of grief in his wife’s eyes shatters him within.

She heard the official story: Broyles was killed while trying to stop Fringe event outside of Boston. It was the kindest fiction available. Broyles may have been a traitor in the end, but to the country he remains a hero. Walter is not willing to compromise the people’s faith in their government. Deep down though, he wants to tell everyone the truth, to show them what the Other Side is capable of. If one of the world’s greatest heroes could be turned, what choice does his world have but to fight?

Walter wants to tell Elizabeth the truth as well. She’s been lied to too much throughout her life, often by Walter himself. But he knows how the truth would hurt her. She was good friends with Broyles, and even better friends with his wife. She had cried at his funeral.

So he frowns and says “Yes, darling, it’s been hard on us all,” and explains who they are looking at for his replacement and spins tales about bureaucratic nightmares.

It’s all for the best, really. Even if Walter can’t use this incident to incite people into war with the Other Side, they’ve been made stronger by this. An enemy has been rooted out and a faithful agent has returned home.

The only exception is the other woman. Walter hadn’t thought that Olivia Dunham would cause problems. He underestimated her. He would have to remember not to do that again.

\-------

Coming back should be weird, but it’s actually just like old times. Olivia has only enough time to read up on the cases that she was supposed to have worked and dye her hair back before she’s thrust back into the fray. Less than an hour after she gets back into headquarters she’s off investigating the kidnapping of a prominent author—the fact that the culprit was reported to be a cyborg puts it into their jurisdiction. There should be an adjustment period, but there’s no time for it.

Charlie and Lincoln help with the rough transition. Being around them is so natural that by the end of the day she slides back into her old routine. She had almost forgotten what it was like to be with two people that she trusted completely.

It’s bad luck about Colonel Broyles, though. She was looking forward to seeing him again. He was so much more open than the other Broyles she had been working with. Two days later, after they hear that he was killed in a Fringe event, she and Lincoln and Charlie go out to a bar and the boys get drunk.

She’s on her fourth glass of water when Lincoln slurs “I wonder what he was doing in Boston. That’s weird.”

“Boston?” That’s where she came back. She doesn’t remember the actual process—she woke up in a car on the Hutchinson-Dyer River Parkway—but they told her she had touched down outside of Boston. Why was Broyles in Boston?

“People are doing weird things everywhere,” Charlie says. He leans forward unsteadily and looks at Olivia before saying “Especially you.”

When she got back, the Secretary told her that no one had noticed that she had been away on a mission. Selfishly she was a little upset that she could be so easily replaced, but hearing Charlie and Lincoln launch into a rambling list of things that she did wrong in the past two months warms her heart in the weirdest way possible.

“…You forgot your oxygen container in a contaminated zone,” Charlie says as he winds down the list, “You kept disappearing randomly, and oh yeah, you went insane.”

“And,” Lincoln adds, pointing at her, “You were way nicer to me than normal.”

“I’m always nice to you,” she smiles.

“Nah, you were more, I don’t know, _understanding_. It was weird.”

“So tell us the truth, Liv,” Charlie says. “What were you up to? Top secret mission?”

The Secretary had warned her against telling anyone about her mission. But looking at Lincoln and Charlie who were both staring at her so openly and waiting for an answer, she knew she couldn’t keep it a secret. She could keep it from Frank, who was gone most of the time anyway, but not from these two men who apparently know her way too well.

“‘Top secret mission’ is one way of putting it…”

\-------

As helpful as the internet is, it fails in providing Peter with what he really needs: a website that explains nice ways to say “I was finally getting some and I was stupid.”

He’s been thinking about it the past couple of weeks, and that’s what he should tell Olivia. He likes to think of it in prettier, more romantic terms, but that is what it ultimately boils down to.

One thing’s for certain, it hasn’t been awkward. Peter can deal with awkward; he spends most of his time with Walter, after all. No, things are just formal. And chilly. And painfully reminiscent of when they first met.

Peter understands why she’s upset. Hell, Olivia deserves to be upset. She knew that she was trapped there and had to deal with god-knows-what in order to get back, while all he did to help her was a half-day of actual work. The rest of the time he thought that maybe he was finally getting a happily ever after.

He deserves a happy ending just as much as Olivia does. Things were going well for once. When the woman you’ve been half in love with since first meeting her finally kisses you, you’re not going to question things.

Which is not to say that Peter didn’t notice that she was acting strangely. He did. The first time he noticed was about two seconds after they got back to their world. But he chalked that up to the universe-hopping. And everything that came after…Peter noticed that she was different, but he thought that it was because she was happy.

He thought that he was making her happy.

But that was stupid. He wasn’t making her happy then and he certainly isn’t now. They still work well together, but things aren’t the same. The other Olivia left a huge elephant in the room that makes it hard to be comfortable. Peter doesn’t help things by referring to cases he solved with her without thinking. He can’t help it; he just wants _something_ to talk about with her and work seems like a safe subject. Except that it isn’t, because the other Olivia really did have to screw up every aspect of their lives.

He wants them to be strong enough to overcome it, but it’s hard. And no matter how much he tries to move on, there’s a voice in his head that keeps telling him _You got used again_. He hates that feeling. That’s why he moved around so much and never worked legitimate jobs; he thought it taught him how to see the signs. But in the end, it didn’t stop him from going over to the other universe and it certainly didn’t help him see that there was something wrong with Olivia.

Peter is going to keep stubbornly trying to make progress with her. No matter what happened, Olivia is still the only person in the world he completely trusts. If he doesn’t have her, he doesn’t have anything that keeps him from getting scared of all the responsibility and running. Everything will turn out fine. It just might take a while.

\-------

Even though she doesn’t take the time off that Broyles suggested, Olivia has a mental list of things to do after getting back.

She calls Rachel and talks to her and Ella for two hours. Then she books a flight to Chicago for New Year’s.

She looks up Lincoln in this world. He was elected to Congress two years ago and is starting to make a name for himself through his work on the Ways and Means subcommittee on health.

She visits Charlie’s grave.

After she does all that, Olivia assumes that she’ll be able to move on and get back into the pace of real life with no unfinished business left behind.

It doesn’t quite work. She is haunted by the fact that she almost died. It wasn’t her first close call, but unlike a lot of other times there was nothing she could do to fight back. Olivia keeps reminding herself that she is lucky because Broyles freed her, that she will always be lucky because there are people in this world who care about her and would do anything to help her.

It doesn’t help with the nightmares, though. Or the fact that she sometimes momentarily confuses Walter with the Secretary and expects Astrid to act likes a computer. So she adds to her list a visit to Sam Weiss.

“You never came to visit me like you usually do,” Weiss says two frames in. The bowling alley had been empty as usual when she got there and he’d suggested a game. “So I knew something was up.”

Olivia smiles. “I could have just been busy, did you think of that?” She’s not actually all that surprised that he knew. She’s come to accept that he knows things that he shouldn’t.

“Call it a hunch. Or an educated guess.”

Olivia is about to make a smart remark when she catches her reflection in the ball return. For a second, she thinks that she has dotted lines on her face. Every time she catches her reflection, that’s what she sees. Unfortunately for her, the bowling alley is filled with reflective surfaces.

She’s blaming her gutter balls on that.

The next time her ball curves too far left, she asks Weiss “Got any advice for ignoring something that’s driving you crazy?”

“You could take up a hobby,” he answers. “That’s what I do. I tried writing books, but it didn’t really work. I only got popular with the crazies. Not really the market I was looking for. Of course,” he adds, “I can’t help unless I know what’s bothering you.”

Olivia plans on brushing it off or changing the subject, but when she opens her mouth what comes out is “Peter was dating the Olivia Dunham from an alternate universe who took over my life and I almost had all my vital organs removed.”

It feels really good to say all of that.

Weiss nods, totally unaffected. “In your case, I think you should take up scrapbooking.” She stares at him for a moment completely dumbfounded before she starts laughing, feeling much lighter than she has for weeks.

She bowls a strike on the next frame.

\-------

Walter keeps a constant to-do list. He does not write it down, of course. There’s no point in that, as he is perfectly capable of keeping track of things in his head. And after all, there are so many delightful reminders scattered around the lab that help jog his memory.

For example, seeing Gene in the afternoon reminds him that he needs to buy milk.

Three bodies brought in to be autopsied? The perfect reminder that they should have a back-up bone saw for occasions such as this, or worse.

Astrid bringing in a plate of scones: why, he just remembered that he must write to a former colleague who now works at Cambridge, of course.

These things may not get done right away, but they get done eventually. It’s how Walter’s mind works and it’s an excellent system, no matter what Peter says.

Peter has been extra-touchy lately about Walter’s habits (touchy, he must tell Astrid to order a new supply of surgical gloves). Olivia as well. Walter supposes that it must be because of that foul woman who invaded their lives, but he knows that can’t be it entirely.

Olivia flinches sometimes when she hears his voice.

If there is one thing Walter does not like, it is knowing that people are scared of him. It’s what he hated most about Saint Claire’s. He remembers that there were nurses who were scared of him. Their fear led to avoidance and then he was in almost total isolation.

Back then his only contact with the outside world was the letters he received. There were never many, but he sometimes got mail from Belly. They weren’t cheerful letters; he wrote about that ZFT manifesto and the coming war. Walter never took it seriously. He was too far gone to see the logic in it. Saint Claire’s filed away some of Bell’s letters on Walter’s behalf and sent them to him after his release. Walter came across them while looking for plastic spoons (he was sure he had stored them in that filing cabinet) and found them to be an enlightening read.

He used to think that Belly was crazy for proposing such a thing, a war between universes. Now, after what he saw on the other side, he’s not so sure. They are preparing for a battle that Walter is not sure his side is capable of fighting.

But he started this war, no matter how good his intentions were. And he must not forget to finish it.

\-------

Astrid starts baking again.

It starts out small; she puts in some of those refrigerated cinnamon rolls into the oven the morning after Olivia got back. A week later she was making muffins and pies. A month later she progressed to scones. It’s now been two months since Olivia got back and she’s really mastered her fondant skills.

A girl has to have a hobby. She also needs a way to deal with the massive amounts of stress and anxiety in her life, although Astrid prefers to call it a hobby. It sounds less crazy that way.

She doesn’t know why she’s still baking. The biggest stressor in her life (compared to all the other little ones provided by Walter) was Olivia’s situation, and that was resolved less than 24 hours after they found out about her double. Logically, everything should be fine now.

Deep down though, Astrid knew that even if they did get Olivia back, things wouldn’t be good. She knew from the moment she found out that Olivia had been switched that the fallout would be horrible. It would be worse than when Peter found out about his past. And whose job is it to deal with this fallout? Astrid’s.

She goes into work every day with a plate of pastries in hand, knowing that Peter is going to be more stubborn than usual, that Olivia will be detached, and that Walter will be muttering under his breath about a coming war. That last one does a great job of keeping everyone on edge.

Astrid’s not letting it get to her though. She may be baking so much that she’s befriended the old lady next door who has fifty years’ worth of _Southern Living_ back issues, but she’s surviving because she has a job to do.

Astrid’s job is to keep people happy. They never told her that when she joined the FBI, but she learned over the past two years that the people she works with need a little help keeping their lives together. Now they need it more than ever. Things may get worse before they get better, but that doesn’t matter.

Astrid is going to keep everyone balanced.


End file.
